One year after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the state’s climate lawsuit at New York Climate Week, on Monday the state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta announced another lawsuit at this year’s activist confab, this time targeting plastics recycling.
The new lawsuit is the latest extension of the ongoing Rockefeller-financed campaign to push environmental policy in the courtroom. Writing on the new recycling suit and its similarities to climate lawsuits, Wall Street Journal reports:
“…The Rockefeller Family Fund, a charity run by the great-great-granddaughter of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller Sr., is funding or providing other support for over 30 of those cases.
“In 2019, Exxon prevailed in one. A state judge found New York’s attorney general didn’t prove the oil company deceived investors about how climate change would affect its bottom line.”
However, with Rockefeller-backed public nuisance climate lawsuits facing an increasingly uncertain outlook, the architects of the climate litigation campaign are switching gears and rolling out the exact same playbook – albeit this time with recycling.
With two public nuisance lawsuits against energy providers over the last two years, it’s clear Bonta is fully committed to wasting taxpayer resources all to curry favor with deep-pocketed ENGOs.
Rockefeller Groups Rolled Out the Red Carpet for California
The announcement of California’s recycling case is hardly surprising given Rockefeller-backed groups telegraphed the upcoming suit in the months (and weeks) leading up to today’s announcement, using the same tactics the groups use to promote and encourage climate lawsuits.
Earlier this year, the Center for Climate Integrity – a Rockefeller-funded group that recruits plaintiffs for climate lawsuits – published a report tracking decades of alleged deception around plastics recycling. Much like former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, AG Bonta seems content to let the activists do the legwork for him: his newly filed complaint essentially mirrors the narrative put forward by CCI. But the record shows that when lawyers let activists write the script, it usually doesn’t fare well.
In another move reminiscent of the Rockefeller-backed #ExxonKnew campaign that kicked off nearly ten years ago and ended with the New York attorney general’s failed lawsuit, the Rockefeller-funded activist outlet Inside Climate News released a story several weeks ago attacking plastics recycling and hinting at upcoming action out of California. Like the ICN-led #ExxonKnew campaign, the activists worked to gin up media attention in advance of a lawsuit that amounts to little more than a splashy headline.
The ICN story was followed up with an explicitly biased poll from Data for Progress, which the group released with CCI earlier this month. Data for Progress is a project of Tides Advocacy, a nonprofit affiliated with the dark-money group Tides Foundation, which has directly funded the plaintiffs’ lawyers behind climate lawsuits. Data for Progress released a similar poll on climate lawsuits shortly after Minnesota and D.C. AGs filed lawsuits against energy companies in 2020.
California Lawsuit Recycles Dubious Claims
Many of the fundamental claims in California’s new recycling lawsuit appear highly dubious. As we recently documented, the record shows recycling technology and recycling uptake rates have been well understood by governments, policymakers, academics, and the general public for decades, particularly in California.
As recently as this past August, Gov. Newsom proudly highlighted investments in California’s recycling system. In a press release from his office regarding investments in plastic beverage recycling sites, the governor said:
“California is taking bold action to transform our recycling systems and reduce the waste filling our landfills and polluting the environment. These modernized recycling sites will make it easier for Californians in every corner of the state to help create a more sustainable and resilient future for our communities and the planet.”
CalRecycle — which is responsible for the state’s waste management, recycling and waste reduction programs — has long supported plastic recycling and invested in educational programs and infrastructure to increase recycling rates. Blaming a single company for the failure of the most regulated state in the country to recycle plastic products is a wild stretch of imagination, and the law.
Plastics Recycling Lawsuit Latest Salvo in State’s War on California Businesses
The recycling lawsuit comes as Gov. Newsom recently called lawmakers back to Sacramento for a special session targeting refiners with new storage mandates, which analysts say could send already high gas prices even higher. Separately, on Monday, Gov. Newsom signed a bill into law that will ban all plastic bags in the state of California by 2026.
Chevron – which called California home for over one hundred years, recently announced its official departure from the state in August, which experts in part attributed to Newsom and Bonta’s climate nuisance suit last year and the state’s hostile regulatory environment.
With this week’s recycling lawsuit, California is making it clear that the state remains closed for business. Instead of working with energy producers, politicians like Bonta and Newsom remain intent on attacking the very technology that could otherwise be deployed to improve recycling rates and lower emissions.
The onslaught of lawsuits and harmful legislation in Vice President (and former prosecutor) Kamala Harris’s home state may create headaches for the presidential candidate as she struggles to court swing-state voters who care more about affordable energy than billionaire donors’ radical agendas. On the campaign trail, so far Harris has avoided mention of climate lawsuits altogether, despite the topic being front and center during her 2020 primary run.
Bottom Line: California’s recycling lawsuit is simply another political ploy to vilify energy producers and drive radical environmental policies through the courts. With climate suits experiencing significant setbacks, it is clear Rockefeller-funded activists are growing desperate to keep their frivolous litigation campaign alive.
